


Incendere

by Rhaella



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-05-28
Updated: 2008-05-28
Packaged: 2017-10-21 15:02:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,268
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/226513
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rhaella/pseuds/Rhaella
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Because when it comes down to it, Zexion really did have a blind spot a mile wide where Axel was concerned.  Somewhat psychological.  Fairly dark.  <b></b></p>
            </blockquote>





	Incendere

_Always at the centre of a circle of back-up stratagems, he is not accustomed to such spectacular failure.  As he struggles to catch his breath, he wonders how he allowed events to spin so far out of control._

 _Riku’s entrance, when it occurs, takes him by surprise (no amount of mastery over darkness should give the boy this sort of reaction speed), but it is the appearance of the  other one—Axel—that sends a surge of terror through him.  A portion of his mind protests that he is no longer capable of feeling such an emotion, but he is too panicked to care._

 _His gaze flickers between Axel and Riku (not Riku, but the replica, his brain supplies helpfully), and he allows himself a brief moment of what might, in another lifetime, have been hope.  Even as he speaks, however, he can see the triumph in Axel’s expression, and knows…_

 _Zexion does not have the strength to flee again._

* * *

To the ignorant onlooker, his room would be a study in contradiction. The cast-offs from his former life as Ienzo are hidden out of sight, though he can find each one in a matter of seconds if the need arises. The books of riddles he liberated in Agrabah rest neatly on a shelf, categorized by size.  Everything, in fact, stands in obsessively perfect order.

Except for the candles.

They lay scattered haphazardly across the floor, and Zexion, leaning over his latest puzzle, pointedly ignores them.  Xigbar had brought the things a few days earlier, without explanation, and, with a smile halfway between cryptic and feral, had tossed them around the room.  Zexion will not so much as touch them.  If he even begins to guess what game Xigbar is playing, he will have already acknowledged Number II as a worthy opponent. 

Zexion refuses to give him the credit.

A knock at his door distracts him from his deliberation, and Zexion looks up in time to see Lexaeus heave the door open.  A protest dies on his lips when the older Nobody speaks, “There is a new member of the Organization in the castle, Zexion.”  As if he had forgotten that another suitably powerful Nobody had been discovered.  Zexion does not mind overly much: he works best when others are uncertain exactly how much he knows.

This brings them to eight now.  “Have you seen him yet?” he asks neutrally.  There are a thousand bids for information built into that question, only a few of which the other Nobody can detect.

Lexaeus is not subtle enough to prevent his face from tightening slightly.  Interesting.  “Briefly,” Number V says.  “He’s going to be a wildcard, I believe.”

He is concerned, Zexion notes, nodding absently at Lexaeus.  He files the information away, suspecting that they may perhaps have potential trouble on their hands.  The larger man shuts the door without another word, and Zexion returns to his puzzle, anticipating how the addition of a new member will shift the dynamics of the Organization.  At the thought, he feels a brief surge of what may once, when he still had a heart, have been excitement.

It is not enough to satiate him (it never is), but it is still something.

* * *

Almost a week passes before Zexion first bothers to meet Number VIII.  He waits patiently as the other members begin to take measure of the new Nobody, and he quietly reaches conclusions from the information that filters through to him.  Zexion enjoys his games, but he will play them on his timetable.  For the moment, it suits him to remain an unknown quantity for the youngest Organization member.

If he were anybody else, the meeting would be utterly accidental.  He is passing through one of the less inhabited hallways of the castle when Number VIII, living up to his title, practically crashes into him.  The redhead catches himself quickly, and looking entirely unrepentant, flashes him a smile that is all teeth and passion, and far too fervent for someone without a heart.

Number VIII taps his fingers thoughtfully to his lips for a moment before bursting out, “Ah!  The mysterious one I haven’t even caught a glance of.  I was beginning to wonder if you even existed at all.  You must be Zexion.  I’m Axel.”  He nods and smiles again, as passionate as before, but Zexion suspects that there is something deeper burning beneath that grin.  “Got it memorized?” Axel adds, almost as an afterthought, though the look in his too-green eyes tells the Cloaked Schemer that nothing about this Nobody will ever be unplanned.

“I do,” Zexion replies coolly, brushing past the younger Nobody without another word.

“Now that’s cold,” Axel protests.  Unwilling to be pushed aside, the redhead follows after him.  “Having no heart is no excuse for poor manners,” he chides.

Zexion turns around, and fixes his eyes on the younger Nobody.  After a few seconds of silence, he senses—practically smells—more than sees a fraction of Axel’s confidence seep out of him.  Softly, deliberately, he agrees, “No, it is not.”

He turns again, and this time, Axel silently lets him leave, momentarily at a loss for words.  The Schemer smiles to himself: this one plays games, certainly, though he surrounds himself with a flurry of words and motion where Zexion prefers silence.  And despite both the weakness and danger he sees in that, Zexion cannot help but be mildly fascinated by the approach.

* * *

That night, he stares down at Xigbar’s candles, whim and logic competing in his mind.  After a moment’s indecision, still reluctant to put an end to the not-game he is assuredly not playing with Number II, he bends down and gathers them together.  Almost deliberately, he sets them up at regular intervals and lights each one.

(Much later, after it is far too late, he will decide that he must have known even in that moment how events would inevitably play out.  And if he did not play his hand as skilfully as he is wont, if he ignored the clues he would normally seek out… even a creature of shadow and illusion can be wilfully blinded.)

In silence, he watches as eight small flames dance as one, as the wispy shadows they cast upon the wall writhe and shiver in their wake.  Slowly, inexorably, the candles burn themselves out, and the shadows are swallowed by darkness.  When the last hint of the byplay between light and shade die, and the room is plunged into deepest night, Zexion does not know whether to laugh or cry.

Having no heart, he can do neither.

* * *

He never actively seeks Axel out.  To show interest would be to volunteer information, and Zexion will not do so.  Perhaps there is some caution involved as well: despite how appealing the notion of out-plotting the younger Nobody is, he is unwilling to play such a game too often.

If he wants the redhead’s company, he will plant himself in a location where Axel is certain to come across him.  He is patient enough to wait as long as necessary, and composed enough to never give away that he is doing any such thing.

When that is not enough, he will try to manipulate Xemnas into assigning them a mission together.  It is not too difficult, after all, to imagine a situation requiring both information gathering and martial ability, and the newest member could always benefit from some experience.  This only works a few times before the Superior realizes his intent and informs him that he can do his scheming himself, but it is sufficient to come to one important conclusion.

Axel is equally frustrated about him.

“No hearts, hm?” Axel notes, his demeanour far more subdued than usual.  The two are walking around Twilight Town, Zexion carefully drawing information from the commoners while Axel tries not to look too bored.

“You are just realizing this now?” Zexion remarks dryly, not quite ignoring the heated glare Axel throws at him.

Axel finally sighs.  With a shake of his head, he says, “It’s just weird.  Whenever I try to figure out how this happened, I feel like I’m going to think myself out of existence.”  Throwing up his hands, he growls a correction, “Non-existence.  Whatever.”

There is little danger of that.  If a Nobody could rationalize himself out of existing, Zexion would have long since faded back into the darkness.  He suspects that he is not the only one.  

“There is no reason behind it.  What we are is an impossibility, a contradiction.  What exactly this failure of logic may leave open to us I cannot begin to guess…” He trails off, shrugging slightly.  With nothing but the memory of passion, he has been largely stripped of even the drive for knowledge and understanding.  “It does not really matter.”

Number VIII looks mildly irritated; Zexion knows that he has no interest in metaphysics.  “But sometimes the memories are so strong that it almost feels real again.  Like if I tried, there’d be enough there to make something out of.”  Axel is passionate, his eyes flashing with some semblance of emotion, and Zexion does not need to wonder why his element is fire. 

The emotion is not real, however, as much as Axel wishes otherwise, and he quickly burns himself out.  “I know it’s not, not really, but… If I can feel like that sometimes, I should be able to feel like that all the time, and… it would be close enough, even if it’s not the same.”  He breaks off, momentarily appearing so close to vulnerable that Zexion is nearly shocked.  “I don’t know.  You’re the scientist, not me.”

“Don’t mistake illusion for reality,” Zexion replies sharply.  For an instant, he wants to be jealous, wishes he could remember so strongly that his world might piece itself back together, but even that envy only is a memory, and he coldly pushes it away.  Zexion is too familiar with illusions to wish to trap himself in one.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah.  I know,” Axel waves him off in typical fashion.  “But it’s like… if I had something to anchor myself to…” he breaks off suddenly, staring almost suspiciously at the older Nobody.  Zexion sees the wariness return to his face as Axel finally understands exactly with whom he is speaking.  Number VIII turns away, all boundaries back up as he wonders how much he gave away, to what conclusions the Cloaked Schemer will come based on this conversation.

Quite a few, though for the moment, Zexion is simply replaying the last few words in his mind.  He realizes, even if Axel himself does not yet, that something actually means someone, and though the concept troubles him, he finds himself strangely intrigued.

An uncomfortable silence descends between the two of them, and Zexion spends the next half an hour wondering whether Axel is going to storm off or attack him.

He does neither.  “I thought, at first, that there might have been something more about you, buried under all the intrigue,” he finally comments, a slight smirk in his voice that Zexion does not like.  “But there really isn’t, is there?  Blow away all that shadow and mystery, and there’s nothing left.”  He gestures briefly, raising his hand and flicking his fingers.

Zexion does not visibly react.  “We are Nobodies,” he reminds the other calmly.  “When we are nothing but the remnants of personalities, what else can we be?”

Axel shrugs it off, but does not look convinced. 

* * *

Not having appreciated Zexion’s attempts to manoeuvre him, Xemnas has not yet chosen to given the Cloaked Schemer any further missions.

Later, Zexion will decide that boredom is the only reason he sends Dusks into Xigbar’s and Axel’s rooms to swap, colour-code, and alphabetize all possessions therein.

Delighted, Xigbar laughs when he sees his newly redesigned room, and forces Number VIII to steal all of his belongings back.

Axel, anticipating a thousand hidden meanings and opening gambits in the gesture, is not nearly as amused.

* * *

There is no knock at his door; Number VIII has no patience for social niceties.  Instead, he slams the door open and stomps inside, a building storm of fire and outrage barely contained within his slender form.

Frowning at the intrusion, as if he didn't fully know—had indeed engineered—the reason behind it, Zexion raises an eyebrow.  “You had best have a decent explanation for this,” he remarks coolly, suggesting without words that no justification short of civil war in the hallway will suffice.

“Damn you,” Axel hisses, moving forward in a burst of motion.  “Damn you and your fucking games.”  Zexion can practically feel those green eyes boring into him, ablaze with barely controlled fury.  He feels… he is not sure what he feels, but for one single moment, watching as Axel breaks in front of him, he is certain that it is more than just a memory.

And suddenly, everything shifts, the perfect control he likes to keep over his non-existence falling away.  Zexion realizes that the game has ended, and for the first time in memory, he cannot tell whether he has won or lost.  Not even bothering to think about what he is doing, he stands and closes the distance between them.  In a corner of his mind, he finds it odd, paradoxical even, that he can so abandon logic, reason… all that is left of him, making him a Nobody instead of nothing at all.

Those green eyes are suddenly so knowing, and even as the need for control takes over again, he is pulled in all directions by half a dozen emotions he cannot identify, should not be able to feel at all.  “I hope you know what you’re doing,” Axel comments, the rage in his voice now replaced by something else entirely.  “Once I start something, I don’t let go until it’s done.”

“No,” Zexion agrees.  “I’m sure you’ll rush heedlessly to your own destruction.”  It does not have the force of prophecy behind it, simply a keen understanding of minds and motivations, but Axel hesitates for a moment.

Then he is moving forward again, as certain and single-minded as if no other direction existed.  For Axel, perhaps none does.  When they collapse against the bed, he pushes Zexion into the mattress, all notions of gentleness forgotten.  Neither has any use for the trappings of romance.  There is no need to make a mockery of that which, for them, can never again be.

Unsurprisingly, holding Axel is like grasping an open flame.  Almost effortlessly, the man twists away from any contact he himself does not initiate; Zexion soon finds his arms pinned at his sides, and though he could slide free easily, he sees no need.  There is nothing healing or cathartic about this, only the sensation of burning, being consumed entirely.  But perhaps there is something even in that: fire cannot survive upon nothing.  In its wake, even self-destruction becomes self-affirmation, proof that there must still be substance, existence: something rather than nothing.

Axel refuses to submit, and Zexion is content to give him the illusion of control.  The redhead is still too young to have realized that this game too has shifted, that power is more a matter of perception than anything else.  They are no longer human; outside of the normal order of things, they make their own rules.  Axel does not yet recognize that he is taking nothing; that Zexion has nothing left to give. 

Hopelessly, irrevocably empty: to be filled by something—by anything—is the closest he is ever likely to come to being again complete.

And then Axel is staring down at him, a smirk lurking behind his eyes.  Zexion’s calculating mind begins working again, and he realizes that this game has not yet been won or lost, and will not be until one of them speaks.

“You performed adequately,” he comments coldly, detachedly, snatching from Axel even the delusion of victory.

The sudden shocked confusion painted across that face, he will later decide, is well worth the black eye.

* * *

“That’s sick, man.”

His mask of calm control slips, and Zexion is grateful that the book he is reading conceals his uncharacteristic flinch.  Quickly recovering his composure, the Schemer shuts his book and stands, not bothering to so much as glance at the intruder.  Even had he not recognized the voice, the scent of highly amused Xigbar cannot be mistaken.

Zexion wonders if Axel’s tongue is as loose as the rest of him, or if Xigbar has progressed from eavesdropping to full voyeurism.

“To what are you referring?” he asks in feigned distraction, searching the bookshelves for the spot the text in his hands belongs.  He already knows, of course.  Xigbar would never hunt him down in the library unless he were in a particularly gleeful mood.

Xigbar does not bother to answer the question.  He knows Zexion well enough to sense when a query needs no response.  Instead, he comes up behind the Schemer and, resting a hand against his back, murmurs in his ear, “If you were into that sort of thing, you should’ve come to me.”

Zexion pushes him away before his hand can drift down too far.  Feeling Xigbar’s leer every step of the way, he slowly and carefully returns his book to its place.  When he turns, Xigbar has wisely averted his gaze, but an amused smirk is still planted across his face.

Zexion does not say a word.  He approaches Number II, eyes full of unspoken, unpleasant promise, and gives him a particularly mysterious smile.

Xigbar does not eat for a week. 

As rewarding as plotting can be, sometimes Zexion finds it more effective to sit back and let his reputation do the work for him.

* * *

They dance around each other at first, neither quite certain where he stands with the other.  Axel seems to lose interest quickly, as if even his obsessive nature is not enough to nourish a grudge against someone who cannot technically exist.  He shifts his focus to the newer members, and if he still believes that there is a game somewhere in their interplay that needs to be won, he shows no sign of it.

Zexion ignores the redhead when he can, pretending, perhaps, that if he does not face his senseless fascination with the other Nobody, it will go away.  As exhilarating as some games are, fire is too dangerous an element to be taken lightly, and he is not yet ready to be burned away.

When they are forced to cooperate, he pushes as much as he dares, and if Axel realizes that the Schemer is not being quite as discerning as he might, he never lets on.

* * *

  
__

He struggles futilely against the replica’s grip, knowing even as he does so that he will never be able to overcome it.  His sight is failing, but he manages to catch Axel’s—his murderer’s—eyes.  In his last coherent thought, he realizes that the replica is nothing but a tool here, the product of his own machination come to unmake him.  It has never been anything more, and now it never will…

 _Axel, fixing an ironic smile on both of them, knows this as well._

 _“Looks like you were the next to go,” Axel comments, and the nuances of his remark are lost upon his nearly senseless victim._

 _By now, Zexion sees more than hears Axel speak.  He has lost too much of himself to feel even the memory of bitterness, anger, fear… Even the pain has become distant._

 _All that remains is the image of his eyes: bright, green, mocking.  And then nothing at all._

**Author's Note:**

> Incendere: To enflame, enhance, ruin, etc. Yay, Latin.
> 
> This wasn’t supposed to happen, and it certainly wasn’t supposed to be my first KH fic. Especially since I managed not only to kill off one of my favourites, but also to violate both my OTPs. Sort of. Ah well, Axel is good at getting in the way like that. I was playing a bit with the interplay between light (or fire, technically) and shadow, and it mutated into something… well, different.
> 
> Axel was very interesting to write, since I was trying to reconcile the sentimentality we see at the end with the ruthlessness (hell, practically sadism) that runs beneath that. Zexion… well, what can I say? His cold cynicism is always fun, and if he’s so bent on trickery and illusion that he’s mastered self-deception as well, I would not be surprised. 


End file.
